Taxi free Monday

Thanks to my taxi boss neighbour who is in jail awaiting a bail hearing this Monday we had no taxi’s or busses on the roads, the taxi’s because they had intimidated the bus drivers not to drive and the taxi drivers were having stun grenades thrown at them by the police at the local court. My neighbour is the gent who also ranted and raved recently about F*&%$#@ whites and he would not allow them to tell him when to come to meeting etc. He is also employed by the municipality as a housing official…nice to bee paid by my tax money and then have a business on the side that you are obviously using work time to run. (Nice to be a black man in Africa neh)……. I have told you about the donkey carts on the road with the normal traffic. Here is proof

Now you all know how much I love this country and stand up for it, but this Blog I am going to vent some anger at the Government both local and national, because they are F%^$#&^%ing up big time and if we are not careful we are going to end up like other African Countries.

This I received in the week and I agree with it 150%South Africans seem to be in a bit of a foul and restless mood, with the gyrations of our philandering president and the rather large potholes on our roads being the subjects enjoying the attention of raspier tongues, especially among the chattering classes.

Jacob Zuma is, frankly, not worth our breath. He's best left alone. He's digging his own grave. Potholes - and the general decline of our infrastructure - are another matter, however. They are a serious matter, but only the tip of the iceberg.

Traveling around the country, one cannot but be shocked at the state of our towns and cities. The streets are a sorry mess, squalid, with overgrown verges, paint peeling off buildings - a general state of neglect and decay. It's as if nobody is in charge. It is as though since the last apartheid apparatchik was chased out of town nobody has cared to lift a finger even to sweep the place. And with the current obsession with renaming things, one is often even confused as to which town or street one is in.

In days yonder, a perfect date for a township dude, dressed to the nines of course, was taking her to the movies, and thereafter some "window-shopping" in town. Not anymore. It's all boarded up now. Whether it's Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, or any of the many small towns across the land, some parts of the CBD have become a jungle, and even a health hazard. No longer a place to dare to venture, let alone take a leisurely stroll. Capital has also taken flight.

The ANC woke up quite late in the day to the crucial role played by local government in the life of a nation. After the election in 1994, most of the organization’s bright sparks scrambled for seats in the national parliament. Positions in city and town councils were seen as nothing but crumbs from the table. It was left to its third string to run our towns and cities. And they've run them down.

Also, in trying to merge towns and townships and do away with the old apartheid boundaries, the ANC has lumped everything together to create huge metropolises which it’s hand-picked, often incompetent, mandarins have found almost impossible to govern. It created a gulf between rate-payers and city halls, hence the alienation.

But the biggest problem, which probably explains the nationwide protests over service delivery, is our system of local government, which ensures that town mayors and managers whose actions and decisions have a huge impact on people's lives are imposed by party bosses without any say by the governed. Such a system is obviously undemocratic, and is no credit to our much-vaunted constitution.

People in such positions are often not sensitive to ordinary citizens' concerns because they are not appointed or elected by them. They are accountable to those who appointed them, the party bosses. Which is why Amos Masondo, the dozy mayor of Johannesburg, can easily pooh-pooh the outrage caused by the potholes which have disfigured the streets of this metropolis. He's not bothered by the outrage. He was imposed by the ANC. And as long as the ANC is happy with this sort of incompetence, so is he.

The country holds yet another local government election next year. It will improve or solve nothing. We will exchange one group of incompetents for yet another bunch of ineffectual individuals. They're not to blame either. It's simply the outcome of an inappropriate system of government.

It's not surprising that as we approach next year's election, none of the political parties has suggested making the system more accountable. They won't. The current system suits them just fine.

If you want clean streets and refuse that's removed on time, agitate for elected representatives at local government. It's called democracy.And this was not written by some Right wing racist whitey it was written by the well respected editor of the Financial mail MR. Barney Mthombothi.

I agree with Barney if I was an ordinary Black South African I would also be pissed off with the service delivery and the lack of concern from the fat cat politicians and councillors the papers are full of these lazy shits wasting our tax money and not delivering. It’s unacceptable that children do not get a decent education and here are just a few problems with local black schools in the bay area (and this is just the tip of the iceberg)

• Teaching is continuing in dilapidated buildings that have been condemned by health authorities• One primary school in Jeffrey’s Bay has four toilets for 750 pupils – and all are broken• A science lab sits unused at a school in Zwide as staff cannot afford to buy the necessary chemicals• At the same school, a computer room with 20 computers donated by Telkom is permanently deserted as there is no qualified teacher to give computer lessons• Lack of fencing at a Jefferys Bay primary school has resulted in squatters settling on school land• Many schools have minimal electricity, and some have none at all• Some schools have more than double the maximum number of children they are built to accommodate.• Two high schools in Humansdorp have to accommodate pupils from within a 200km radius.The provincial Education Department says it needs a whopping R23-billion to address infrastructure issues in the Eastern Cape and that the backlog will take an astounding 20 years to clear.(Go to schools of shame on the Herald newspapers websitehttp://www.theherald.co.za/)

Matric mess: look out, the government has lied to you12 January 2010Andile Mngxitana

DEAR reader, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your government lied to you when it said 60percent of matriculants have passed. The truth is only 21percent actually passed and I’m being generous here.Basically we have a situation where, if you had 100 children who were supposed to be in matric last year, only about 20 would have passed.Let me tell you about a well-kept national secret and monumental scandal. The media and most education commentators missed it.In 1998 about 1,5million children started school. Of these only about 500000 wrote matric last year. This means that during 12 years, the schooling system lost almost a million pupils.Yes, almost a million children who started school in 1998 dropped out before matric. We must ask President Jacob Zuma what the democratic government has done with a million of our children. We have lost these pupils under ANC rule so no need to blame apartheid.Only about 40 percent of those who started school in 1998 wrote matric last year. So the real pass rate is a shocking 21percent as Martin Prew of the Centre for Education Policy Development said.The pass rate could be as low as 10percent if we discount those who got 30percent and 40percent in certain subjects. Yet our democratic government says if our children do not know 60 to 70percent of a subject they have passed.Incredible!Further, those with university exemptions are likely to fail the first year, because they are hugely under-prepared.Black-wash, the Soweto based youth movement, explains the crisis thus: “The reality is that even though blacks and whites are supposed to have equal opportunities, blacks in township schools have few opportunities or skills. For example, a Grade 7 pupil in a white school is more likely to have better mathematics and literacy skills than a black matriculant. So black s fail Grade 12 because they have been systematically under-prepared since Grade 1.”As we know, 97percent of children in private schools, which is essentially a white system, have passed and of those, close to 80percent have university exemption ..These differences speak to different resource allocations, teacher preparedness, salaries and conditions of work. They also speak to the unchanged socioeconomic conditions of blacks.We need to blame the government 100percent for the shocking state of our education. We must demand to know where the million pupils we lost in the 12 years are. We must demand that Zuma and his government declare our education system a national disaster. This means we need urgent and extraordinary intervention to correct the situation.We need to really stop the pretence we call education. If need be, we must stop schooling for two years to sort things out.Right now there is educational genocide for the black child. Truth is, if half the energy we put into the FIFA 2010 World Cup was focused on education we could turn the situation around within five years.But then, again, we care more about games and jamborees than our people, so don’t count on it.Next year this time I will reissue this same column. Expect no changes in our education disaster.I wonder how one can be positive under these circumstances.

'We used to ride on the left side of the road!Now we have to ride on what is left of the road '

Ok last gripe, this is true and has to do with government offices that decided that they wanted to have Big screen TV’s and DSTV decoders in 25 senior managers offices so that they could watch the Parliament channel………very contentious don’t you think? Well when the technician got the quote for Parliament channel only for the offices the reply was no get the whole package (x25) as we may as well have the benefits of the whole package……….so guess who is going to be watching the SWC in their offices….good job the Porn channel has not been agreed on otherwise getting shafted by local government could take on a whole new meaning.

This is so simple but worth a try!An engineer (ex-NASA project director) has what I think is the near perfect solution for airport security! Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at the airports.Have a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you.It would be a win-win for everyone, and there would be none of this crap about racial profiling and this method would eliminate a long and expensive trial. Justice would be quick and swift.

A friend of mine had her photo taken with two ass----s pity Malema is not there, but here is a great photo of got of the man that put the Ass back into …hole

Saw something really strange this week………a really Fugly woman driving a Merc 500 SLK…. She must have bought it herself or it’s her toy boy’s. As far as I was aware the salesmen at Mercedes are not allowed to sell a car like this unless the woman is Blonde and has a stunning cleavage. Here in PE any woman in a fancy car is blonde and busty and is probably called Storm, Summer, Dakota or Holly. So I do not know how she slipped through the gap.Gabby (my daughter) had her first Prom on Friday….all dressed up (doesn’t she look gorgeous) WE also had to go and show grandma and cousins what she looked like, while Gabby was at the dance Tania and I had dinner and a Lekker evening with the family at Ryan’s nice just sitting back and chatting about this and that laughing at things and in general enjoying ones company ….. .. Daniel was his normal full of energy self and running around the garden playing with his sisters.

Gabby flies up next Sunday to Gauteng to spend 10 days with my family on the plot and she will have a Jol as they are taking Gabby to horse shows and my mom and sister I know will spoil her rotten. My mom had an operation this week to attach the retina back in her right eye, so I am glad that it went well and hopefully wont take two years to heal as it can take 2 months to two years to work properly. I can’t wait till June to see my mom and dad, will be great to see them looking forward to us all having a Lekker get together.

Book on Clarens is really coming along thanks to my friend Paul Els (well known author) for his assistance and me missus Tania and Keith for their hard work and encouragement taking it to a printer this coming week to get quotes on printing

Did SHE Rep training at the Dept of home affairs this week Ryan was the trainer and I did the course. Learnt a lot and have decided that if I need a new SA passport or ID I will go there with a Biochemical Hazardous waste suit as well as a fire extinguisher.

On Thursday Ryan and I did 4 shows for Aspen pharmaceuticals on the environment and part of that is about overpopulation…..seems the UN have estimated that by 2050 the worlds population will be 9 billion (it was 2 billion in 1950) I was wondering though if they had taken into consideration both Steve Hofmeyer’s and Jacob Zuma’s abilities to sire children??

Sports round up for the week

Bulls won (but only just)Sharks won at lastLions lostStormers wonCheetahs lost (got beaten by Stormers)

Seems that Tigers wood has started to play golf again and I find it ironic he has gone straight from playing with his US mistresses to playing the US Masters

Some strange warnings/instructions found on products

• On a German Chainsaw ...'Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.'(Was there a lot of this happening somewhere?)• On Clicks Children Cough Medicine-- 'Do not drive a car or operatemachinery after taking this medication.'(We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if wecould just get those 5 year-olds with head-colds off those bulldozers.)• On a bag of Simba Chips -- You could be a winner! No purchase necessary!Details inside.(The shoplifter special?)

Got a nice call from Werner and Jeanelle Skyped me, was good to hear from them, got a couple of e-mails from Meat bomb as well, but we seem to keep missing each other….always good to hear about the village. Still no job, but working on it so hopefully good news soon. My rent has been sommer increased by R500 per month, so that is nice….thanks Mr Landlord.

About Me

I am 50 years young I have a daughter called Gabriella who is 18. I am Proudly South African. I used to live in a small drinking town with a fishing problem but moved to Port Elizabeth in 2009. I have had a pretty interesting life and up until a few years back when a good friend of mine persuaded me to look at writing a political/military book I had never ever thought of writing for pleasure. Not that I think that I am a great writer, but I do enjoy it and I have recently published my first book "The Clarens Chronicles" available from stephend@nosa.co.za. I ride a Harley Davidson 1200 Sportster and I ride as often as I can (not often enough)Having purchased a big boy scooter a couple of years back I am travelling all over PE and surrounds on two wheels and find it awesome. Hopefully with this blog you will get to know more about me, my family and my friends. The Born Warriors Blog is one that i have set up to help collect stories and information on those men and women who have contributed to military history but have never received the credit they have deserved.